The purpose of the proposed research is to examine the development and operation of unofficial and semi-official governing institutions in urban neighborhoods -- the processes by which community residents generate and sustain their own arrangements for making collective decisions and producing home-grown public services. The objects of investigation will be twenty neighborhoods sampled from the residential communities of Baltimore, Maryland. Within each sample neighborhood, interviews will be conducted with 80 to 100 local residents and with a smaller group of institutional leaders and officials. In addition, four to six neighborhoods will be selected for detailed case-studies. The investigation will look for the signs of unofficial governance in four areas of neighborhood life -- in the residents' perceptions of their neighborhood communities, in their efforts to produce their own public services informally, in the activities of formal community associations, and in the dealings between neighborhoods and the official government of city hall. As a general strategy for mapping the contours of the neighborhood polity, the proposed research will examine the formation and processing of neighborhood political agendas. Its chief task is to explain why the strength and character of unofficial governance varies from one neighborhood to another.